Member Avatar for 2ney

My Friend has a Dell Inspiron8250 Series Computer with the following spec:

Pentium 4 2.8Ghz
120GB HDD,
Geforce 4 Mx 64MB
512MB DDR
DVDRW
DVD

He recently came across problems regarding his aol boradband .. the drivers wern't installing "due to a problem with the operating system"

so we decided to install winxp over the top again (using a legit copy) using a winxp CD as apparently Dell never shipped a Recovery or Driver CD with his (altho 1 is in the post now)

all was going well until after the installation. Now everytime we try to boot up the PC it bluescreens before the login with the 0x000007B error.. However.. this is the only information i can extract from the bluescreen as it resete the pc almost immeadiatly. I tried reinstalling XP to no avail and we are trying to avoid a Format.

At the moment i can acess the CMD through winxp Recovery Centre Option and attempting any safe mode, last known configure or repair option leads to a futile end.

Has anyone got any idea how to fix this? I was hoping to disable the Blue screen reset so i can get the whole error but I cant without getting into windows.

Ive looked on MS KB but all solutions appear to be within windows (but I cant actually log into it yet) :)

On a final note the "Dumbed Down" Bios of Dell appears fine... my personal opinion is its IDE related and that the winxp cd has interrupted Dells set up on the PC but i cant think of any ways to progress.

any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by navyjax2
Member Avatar for Phreak

Hi,

We use only dell pc's at our site and have encountered numerous faults with them blue screening. Mostly with the GX240 line, faulty drives, driver issues, windows updates causing the pc to crash? etc etc

After many attempts we discovered the easiest way was to reset the bios to default config, ensure all connections were secure, then delete all partitions on the C;\ drive if any, and then do a full format and a full clean installation of windows.

When you do this i recommend you have no extra components plugged in to the pc (such as mobile phones, usb pen drives, joystciks, internet etc etc etc...) have the pc as basic as possible keyboard mouse and monitor. Once it has set up, install each one 1 at a time then you will be able to pinpoint the problem. To me is sounds like a possible driver issue.

We have had occasions where usb pens were causing computers to crash during boot (dont ask i dont make the rules?)

I know i havent told you much else from what you have already done but to be honest i would open her up, check every ide/sata connection then delete all partitions, then do a clean full ntfs format, then a full clean installation of windows. Some times its easier and quicker to wipe than it is to search for whats causing the problem..

then install your other items one by one.....

Probably not what you want to hear but with the lack of info available probably the easiest option.


Quick note..

When i did this for a user here, they had documents they didn't want to lose on the oc, So i just performed a "quick" format instead of a full format "as it does nothing really" then use'd a recovery tool and windows was kind enough to not wipe any of the files. (This is not gaurneteed to work but with such a large drive you may be lucky)

Let us know if you get any more info regarding the bsod...

Member Avatar for lloyd

why do you want to avoid format the drive,if you want to remain the origenal os, you couldn't after you reinstall the xp. if you want keep your data file, you,may have a chance. many new computer have a recovery partition, you can install your system on this partiton. you can format it , you have already missed the chance to recover system from this partition. two os installed on same drive usually make problem, especially when xp with xp or win2k with xp.

Member Avatar for 2ney

it was an on the top install of xp.. ive done this several times myself but only ever had minor Dx glitches which are easy to solve.. I want to avoid format as he realised he didnt back up everything. I installed over the top as i knew that missing dll files and system files for windows were causing driver glitches... this really shouldnt have an impact with regards to "2 os's installed" essentially there is still only one OS.

Phreak i know what u mean with dells (i hate their bios and setup... so glad i have a PhoenixAward Bios.) I think the stop error may be the "innaccessible Boot disc/drive" one.. now if im correct thats IDE setup related?.. ive fished around on dells site and found an IDE (essentially a detector) bootup that may in my opinion work... ill give it a try... heres the link i got to it. just wondering what ure opinion is on it.


Thanks for replying both of you

Member Avatar for Phreak

Ill definetly have alook as we have had several problems with dells, however
you forgot to post the link?

Please do.

Member Avatar for navyjax2

Have you tried Safe Mode, Safe Mode with networking, or Enable VGA Mode on the F8 menu yet? If it still blue screens after resetting CMOS (remove the power cord and motherboard battery for a while, probaby 5 mins. is enough), assuming you have access to another computer, preferrably with a CD-R/RW drive, you can create a boot CD from a Windows XP CD that will allow you to read the data on the drive and get it to a USB hard drive or network it to another computer/network storage at the following link:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

- you'll have to scroll down to the downloads section and scroll a little bit farther down to the "Getting Started" section. It has all the instructions there, just follow them closely. You can even add plug-ins into it to get other functionality, like web browsing, virus scanning, etc. You'll use pebuilder.exe to create an .iso image after you select what to include and copy in the files to the appropriate directories (especially the XP NIC driver if using networking! USB drivers are included already), then you can use a program like Roxio or Nero to open it and burn the boot CD.

The CD will be good on any computer as long as it meets the minimum specs for XP, you have the RAID drivers loaded on the CD if you attempt to boot a RAIDed computer, and you have that computer's NIC driver loaded on that CD.

Once you have the data off, do the reformat and reinstall. Hopefully this helps.

Member Avatar for jayson1209

I have the same problem too, or i have a bigger problem than that, my computer is acer, i tried to format my computer and it was succesful. but when i boot windows xp it always appear , the blue screen with 0x000000b(parameter 1, parameter 2, parameter 3)

this is so bad i need help!

Member Avatar for navyjax2

I would try another hard drive, if you've gotten your data off of the old one, if your blue screens continue after a reformat. If a new drive doesn't work (still blue screening), try taking out all cards except for the video card, and re-install XP onto the new drive one more time. If that works, install the new cards and their drivers one-by-one and reboot after each installation to discover which one is malfunctioning.

If the new drive doesn't work (still blue screening) after the XP install, try reseating the RAM and the motherboard battery as the next steps - third step is to get a new motherboard (and perhaps processor & fan, if they don't make mobos for your processor anymore) if those steps don't correct anything.

Blue screens can be serious and usually indicate hardware issues (failures or incompatibilities), as long as you didn't install any new software or do any driver updating recently. If things had been working for a while, and it happened "out of the blue" (excuse the pun), usually that means failures.

Good luck.

-Tom

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